(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to providing digital information and/or data services over hybrid network infrastructures including both IP and coax transmission media.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Current practice within enhanced digital television and video-on-demand (VOD) systems is to deliver digital TV and VOD services either using RF frequencies over existing coaxial cable (coax) infrastructure (e.g., via QAM data transfer or highly segmented coax loops with IP-over-coax data transfer), or via Internet Protocol (IP) solutions (e.g., via Ethernet cable infrastructure using IP).
In the hospitality industry, a large segment of the market for such services still relies heavily on coax infrastructure; some entirely, and others having newer parts of their infrastructures being IP-based while older parts still employ coax.
IP-over-coax solutions are characterized by an inherent problem in that coax does not have the available bandwidth to deliver the television and video services people demand using this approach; particularly high definition video. IP-over-coax also requires fairly radical modifications to conventional coax infrastructure to make it work at all. That is, in order to provide sufficient bandwidth, the long loops employed by conventional coax infrastructures must be segmented into much smaller loops or segments.
Cable television providers have long provided television and video services over coax using quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) in the downstream direction, and IP-over-coax for the return path (which typically has much lower bandwidth requirements). The combination of QAM in one direction and IP-over-coax in the other allows such solutions to avoid having to make the alterations to the existing coax infrastructure required by a fully IP-over-coax solution.
However, these solutions do not address the needs of facilities having infrastructures which include both IP and coax. An example would be a hotel with an older wing that only has a coax network infrastructure, and a newer wing having an IP infrastructure. In such facilities, separate solutions are typically required to provide data and video services to the guest rooms on both infrastructures.